Nathaniel Cook was the designer of a set of chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 figures, which is now the standard set.

He registered his design at the United Kingdom Patent Office

United Kingdom Patent Office

The Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom is, since 2 April 2007, the operating name of The Patent Office. It is the official government body responsible for intellectual property rights in the UK and is an executive agency of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills...

 on 1 March 1849 under the Ornamental Designs Act of 1842. As he was the editor of The Illustrated London News, the newspaper where Howard Staunton

Howard Staunton

Howard Staunton was an English chess master who is generally regarded as having been the world's strongest player from 1843 to 1851, largely as a result of his 1843 victory over Saint-Amant. He promoted a chess set of clearly distinguishable pieces of standardised shape—the Staunton pattern—that...

 wrote a regular chess column, he asked Staunton to advertise his chess set. Staunton did so in his column on 8 September 1849, and the set became famous under the name Staunton chess set

Staunton chess set

The Staunton chess set is composed of a particular type of chess pieces used to play the game of chess. According to the rules of chess, this style is to be used for competitions. Nathaniel Cook is credited with the design, and they are named after Howard Staunton. The first 500 sets were hand...

.